Old People Have Sex, Too: The Ballad of Pam Anderson and Liam Neeson

In a handful of media appearances promoting The Naked Gun, Pam Anderson and Liam Neeson have appeared together on red carpets and talk shows. As a result, this film rollout has been accompanied with more erotic speculation than any movie in recent times. Longtime action star Neeson and actor/style icon Anderson have been photographed giggly and handsy with one another, as well as giving quotes attesting to mutual appreciation. So, what’s so unusual about two co-stars flirting? Well, the near-universal approval reaction to a 73-year-old widower and a 58-year-old divorcee’s PDA gives me pause: Are we ready to believe that late-in-life love and sex are a real possibility?

I’m around Anderson’s age, so I’ve been surprised by how everyone (Redditors, colleagues, online celeb news commentators) has kvelled over the two and their antics. To be clear: Neither I, nor anyone I am aware of, has proof that any actual sex has transpired between the two, but the suggestion is there for sure. “Seeing Pamela giddy like a first love is so wholesome. This love story is a nice little distraction from today's hellscape,” reads one post; “These two are so cute together ” says another.

It’s a real surprise to me, since I guess I’m still lugging around the years of ageism that shames women of a certain age into accepting invisibility and compromised vaginas. I hear it again and again from friends my age—romantic adventure and sexual thrill are priorities for younger people, not us. Counter to that, however, a hard launch of elderly sexuality has been bubbling up in the culture. In 2010, designer Tom Ford guest-edited French Vogue and included a softcore pictorial of a grey-haired woman biting at the flesh of a mature man. A 2018 poll of 1,000 Americans found that 40 percent of those between ages 65 and 80 are sexually active. And in 2022, the New York Times blew the lid off senior nookie with graphic descriptions in a story entitled The Joys (and Challenges) of Sex After 70.

I feel pretty solid in saying, voice-of-a-generation style, that years of relationship bed death are often accepted by women, since we’re expected to be caretakers-earners-child-rearers. In the heat of middle-aged sandwich generation exhaustion, it can be too much to expect to feel sexy, too. So let us all lift our eyes and note, on the other side of all that responsibility: Pam and Liam are having a go of it! They are being crazy kids re-enacting the Titanic at an age when a lot of marrieds are done with their spouses, and singletons are despairing of ever meeting someone who can tolerate their shtick. With every commenter’s heart emoji and thumbs-up, I’m seeing a collective hope that there is new excitement for us just around the corner.

And while some nay-sayers have suggested the whole romance is an invented affair to sell movie tickets, I’m not buying it. (People cited a source as saying the two are dating, Neeson reportedly traveled to Massachusetts to see Anderson in a play, and I don’t need a body language expert to detect infatuation.) There’s no fool like an old fool—and if that makes me and countless other Pam-and-Liam shippers fools for love, so be it.